why do living things have to die?
In: Biology
The design of living things has been shaped, over billions of years, by evolution, and there is no evolutionary pressure for immortality. There is evolutionary pressure to procreate. While some more complex species (such as humans) can have non-procreating members still contribute to the overall survivability of the species as a whole, it is still generally better to have older members to eventually die off, leaving resources for younger members so they can survive to procreate.
There is one known immortal species: the immortal jelly fish. But jelly fish are a relatively simple organism. It attains immortality by basically reverting to an earlier stage in its life cycle. This is not something possible for more complex organisms and, even if it were, it would still be a kind of death as you would retain no memories of your past “life.”
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